Pipe Simplifies Sharing Big Files With Facebook Friends

Pipe, an application for Facebook could make large file transfers even easier between friends on the world’s most popular social network, currently for free.

Once users have an enabled the application on their Facebook account, they are able to share files simply by dragging and dropping the things they wish to share onto the system’s application. Once there, they need only indicate the friend they wish to share the file with.

Instead of having those files be uploaded to a file server and then available to the user on the other end the way most storage solutions like Dropbox and SkyDrive do, Pipe’s system sends that file directly to the receiving user. It’s able to do this using something called peer-to-peer technology that sounds awfully similar to the technology also employed in popular file sharing applications.

If the receiving user is offline, the file is then stored on the service in what it’s calling a locker, and that user is able to get the file later. Pipe says that it can share any file between users as long as it’s 1GB in size or less, though any file that it has to store in one of its lockers is limited to 100MB. Pipe doesn’t limit the amount of lockers users can have.

Pipe’s founders previously worked on music licensing, music services. As a whole the service could easily solve one of the few remaining problems with sharing files online.

Every service from DropBox, to SkyDrive and even GDrive require the user to either upload the file to their service then share a link online, or already have their email address to directly communicate a link to the file that’s been uploaded.

As Facebook requires users to input their real names and is the world’s most popular social networking service, a user of pipe already has all the tools they need to seamless send files. Even better is the fact that a singular file can be up to 1GB size. Most services limited the files that can be uploaded to numbers well below that, for example SkyDrive’s web interface limits files to 250MB in size.

While users have had access to an ever increasing array of online storage solution, none of them have become a clear cross platform leader. Instead users have tended to gravitate towards the solution provided by the company whose services they already use most.

If Pipe can deliver a straight forward, universal experience, it could become a clear front runner in the effort to share user’s files.